


I had a feeling that I belonged, I had a feeling I could be someone

by cettevieestbien



Series: semi/modern stucky [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bullying, Compatibility, Doodles, F/M, Fist Fights, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Homophobia, Illnesses, Loss of Limbs (mentioned once), M/M, Masturbation, Military Homophobia, Minor Invasion of Privacy, Minor Loss of Trust, POV Bucky Barnes, Percy Jackson quotes, Possessive Behavior, Same-Sex Marriage, September 11 Attacks, Song Lyrics, Soulmates, Steve is temporarily referred to as Steph, both illnesses and fist fights are minor, minor underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 02:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7149206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cettevieestbien/pseuds/cettevieestbien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s seven years old when "he man he man i have the power" shows up on his right arm.</p>
<p>OR,<br/>Steve and Bucky are soulmates who communicate through writing song lyrics and book quotes on themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I had a feeling that I belonged, I had a feeling I could be someone

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky was born in 1980, Steve in 1981. Bullying refers to a part where someone writes "kys" on Steve, which stands for "kill yourself". There is also minor sex scenes in this story, though they are in no way in depth.
> 
> As I was writing, I realized that New York has had marriage equality since before 6/26/15 so... this is in a universe where it didn't, I guess.
> 
> Title comes from Fast Car, by Tracy Chapman.
> 
> I've had this in my docs for months and I haven't posted much recently... so here we are.
> 
> Enjoy!

He’s seven years old when _he man he man i have the power_ shows up on his right arm.

 

He sighs and writes back right under the song lyrics, _no_.

 

Bucky Barnes is not into superheros with dumb hair and stupid songs, okay? Not when there are Inspector Gadget reruns to watch.

 

They don’t write back.

 

* * *

 

He’s nearing eight when the lyrics to Fast Car by Tracy Chapman comes in, letter for letter, on his back.

 

It’s someone else’s handwriting, he notices as he looks in the mirror over his shoulder. More girly, he thinks. But he reads them all, and he looks down at the He Man lyrics and he sighs. His Mama always told him this would happen, and he would have to do it back if he wasn’t the one who started it.

 

So he writes, on his upper left thigh, _today's another day to find you shying away I'll be coming for your love, ok?_ because he is, at his core, unoriginal. Plus, his Mama said you can never go wrong with some a-ha.

 

He isn’t a puberty yet, so he can’t feel his soulmate, but can imagine a smile. He can also see one, because they draw a very detailed smiley on his leg.

 

* * *

 

He’s ten and his skin is covered in lyrics and drawings. He’s not one-of-a-kind there, in Indiana, but he’s the only one who gets more than simple phrases.

 

Generally, people get lines from songs or sonnets, words strung together in books, some lucky few can have short conversations. How much communication you can have and which forms you’re allowed to communicate with are a testament to how compatible you are.

 

Beyond Bucky’s now washed off no, there’s been no real conversation. Bucky’s tried, tried to ask for a name, to give his own, but it doesn’t work.

 

So he continues to write his soulmate song lyrics, and he continues to get them back. He distinctly remembers getting _I feel stupid and contagious_ on his collar bone like a necklace. Then, they’d drawn the face of Nirvana in the middle of it, so it rested on the bottom of his neck.

 

He stares at the little words on his fingers at night, and he’s only ten, but he thinks he’s probably ready to live forever with whoever is writing all over him.

 

* * *

 

He’s eleven when someone draws on his face on the bus. It’s just the Batman signal, and he knows his soulmate won’t get it, but he gets mad.

 

He goes home and rants to his mother and sister about how he doesn’t think anyone with _some common sense would draw on someone who very clearly is a more advanced receiver_.

 

His mom pats his head, smiles, and tells him, “Buck, you know they didn’t get it, so it’s not a big deal. Plus, baby, there are ways to get the marks off.”

 

Bucky reacts like most people do when they hear that - “Why would anyone want to get rid of their marks?”

 

She tells him horror stories of abuse and grief and death, and Bucky freaks out.

 

And, knowing they won’t get it, he writes as big as he can, **STAY ALIVE** on his chest, using the mirror to get it right.

 

He really, really doesn’t expect the _ok geez_ that appears on the webbing between his left thumb and left index finger.

* * *

 

He’s fifteen, now. From what conversation the universe allows he and his soulmate, he knows they’re a boy named Steve who lives in Brooklyn. He knows Steve is a year younger than him, and constantly sick.

 

Bucky’s usually not one for anxiety - it’s not in his family - but Steve’s sickness transfers to him, sometimes, and it’s… bad.

 

The people around him call him laid back, up until the moment his nose drips. His nose drips, and he goes batshit with worry or fury, and there’s no in between. Bucky’s nose dripping could mean snot or blood.

 

His Dad said something similar once, and he’d laughed, but it’s true.

 

Steve also gets in fights. Bucky’s gone to the hospital because of a broken nose, fractured rib and split lip, even though he was never in a fight. He’d been put in for “transferred injuries”, which were usually broken limbs, cuts and bruises.

 

He tries and tries to get Steve to stop, but writing on what few patches on skin that’s bare and writing things like “please stop, stevie, i need you to stop” don’t go through.

 

Sometimes, Steve writes things that don’t show up, he can tell. It leaves his skin itchy, and his mind restless, like he’s missing something.

 

He hates the feeling, so he sticks to lyrics. In cramped, small letters on the bottom of his foot, he writes, _you became the light on the dark side of me love remained a drug that's the high and not the pill_ , because he’s still unoriginal but he’s also feeling the effect of something. Something he thinks he’s still too young to know about.

 

* * *

 

By the time Bucky Barnes is officially sixteen, he and Steve have written all over each other. He didn’t understand when he was younger, but now that he can imagine a short, blonde boy with Bucky’s handwriting on almost every inch of his skin, he gets it.

 

It’s about possession. He still looks back at the whole song written on his back, looks at the little words written between the lines. Steve had only been six or seven when that was written there. He probably hadn’t understood the need to mark any more than Bucky did back then.

 

Now, it’s obvious.

 

“Duh,” the girl above him says with a giggle after she explains the appeal to him. Her soulmate is in New Mexico, older than her by a few years. She’s trying to get back at him, she’d told him. He had sex all the time, she explained, and he didn’t even try to make sure she wouldn’t feel it. It’s generally considered rude to do that, though there are exceptions.

 

“And I know, the way you act, that your ‘mate isn’t giving you any, so why not?” She’d said to him. And he’ll blame it on his hormones forever, because he’d never given Steve any, either, and why not kickstart this thing now?

 

He lost his smarts when his downstairs brain came online. Duh.

 

He acts like he knew all along, when he hears that awful word. He hates being made fun of. He thinks back to the _kys_ someone in New York with thick writing had written on the back of his and Steve’s hands, and he feels sick every time. Feels sick that Steve had to go through all of that, that Bucky’s forced to remember that he can’t help Steve against the bullies that want him gone.

 

So when he hears things like “duh” he acts like he knew all along. He tells her so and she laughs, and then she lets him touch her boobs and he thinks he calls someone else’s name when the inevitable happens.

 

* * *

 

Steve doesn’t write anything for days, and while that’s not wholly new, he also doesn’t give Bucky anything.

 

Like, say, emotions, or a dripping nose.

 

He contemplates going down to the center, in town, where you can find your ‘mate based on official records of their writing. He wants to apologize, to beg for forgiveness. Now that he’s not thinking with his dick, he understands how rude it was, what he did. Steve isn’t in the same timezone, and he could’ve been doing anything while Bucky was….

 

He thinks about the fact that what’s between them will never be the same again, because Steve knows things about Bucky that only one girl in the whole world knows.

 

Then the thought of what they have going on changing freaks him out, and he cries on his Mom’s shoulder. She pats his hair and hushes his cries and he feels so, so stupid.

 

* * *

 

Steve writes back, eventually, saying a simple, _no man is worth the aggravation_ and leaving it at that.

 

Bucky laughs and writes back, _that’s ancient history, been there, done that_.

 

Steve draws one of the women from the movie on a bit of skin on his right arm, and that’s it, they’re good again.

 

* * *

 

Eighteen comes and goes for him, and he waits for Steve’s birthday to do their tradition.

 

Steve had been in the hospital on Bucky’s birthday, so the _happy birthday to you_ curling around his belly button doesn’t have another layer added to it until July.

 

The little balloon that Steve had drawn in his belly button and then demanded Bucky trace over so he could have one too doesn’t get another layer, but he still pokes at it. He remembers vividly how bad it had tickled.

 

They couldn’t give each other presents, but the happy birthday and the balloon had always been what they could give to each other.

 

Bucky has a plan, and while he doesn’t think his plan will work, he still wants to try to give Steve something else this year. The balloon isn’t enough anymore, he can’t help but think. And even though his mind is telling him it’s still rude, it’s still not smart, he’s going to go through with it.

 

He also can’t help but think that his plan is dumb and way too expensive.

 

The lube is made for soulmates, and it cost almost all of his monthly allowance. Still, he bought it, and he’ll use it. He tries to warn Steve - their birthdays have always been the time their own words make it across the states the easiest - but he’s not sure if he gets it.

 

He waits until midnight, when he knows Steve will be in bed, and then he slicks up his fingers and pushes his hand beneath his pants.

 

(Steve doesn’t get nearly so mad this time.)

 

* * *

 

At twenty-one, he’s going to school for an engineering degree.

 

Steve’s twenty, going to Pratt and trying to enlist.

 

He’ll never get in, and they both know it. But he still tries, and then 9/11 happens, and Bucky does what Steve can’t.

 

He becomes Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes a few months later. He’s the best damn sharpshooter his CO has ever seen, and he’s distinguished because of all of the marks on him. It’s not what he expected out of his life, but it’s not bad.

 

* * *

 

The first letter comes when he’s been overseas for a few weeks.

 

_Bucky you asshole_ , it starts in Steve’s familiar handwriting.

 

_I love you and if you die I’ll bring you back and make you regret it_ , it ends.

 

Bucky laughs and laughs and then he writes one back that’s basically him apologizing and making a fool of himself.

 

* * *

 

While he’s overseas, they share physical experiences a lot more than usual. Even though they’d only done it a few times through puberty, Bucky was finding himself with his hand on himself more and more. It sometimes felt like the only way he and Steve could really be together.

 

The letters were still coming, so they could talk, but the other boys in his battalion take more notice of him than they already were. They assume things, that aren’t necessarily incorrect.

 

His CO tells him to “cut out the gay shit” and then says he won’t tell anyone, because he’s “not completely” homophobic.

 

He doesn’t tell Steve, and he starts calling Steve “Steph”. He and Steve do a lot more together and no one knows the difference between Steph and Steve, or how many times he comes gasping that name.

 

* * *

 

When he’s twenty-five, it’s 2005 and it’s been years since he came home. He’d been given a quick R&R, and he’d gone to India, but now he’ll be back in the states for more than a week and a half.

 

He goes to New York, instead of home to Indiana.

 

Natasha, a woman from his team, comes with him.

 

He corresponds with a woman named Peggy, who, apparently, was the one who helped Steve get the words of Fast Car on his back all those years ago. She’s happy to help him surprise Steve.

 

Natasha knows the truth about Steve, and Peggy knows all about him. Peggy also says that another friend of Steve’s, Sam, is aware and will be picking him and Nat up from the airport.

 

They find out, there in the airport, that Sam is the same Sam Natasha has been writing to on her own skin, and that Bucky “is as hot as Steve said”.

 

And then he knocks on Steve’s front door and meets the other half of his soul for the first time.

 

(Steve gapes up at him, a batman signal on his forehead - and Bucky kinda wants to rage again, because he _wasn’t supposed to get that_ \- and they stare at each other like a coupla fools for long enough that Sam and Natasha clear their throats obnoxiously at them.

 

And then Steve jumps at him, wraps his small legs around Bucky’s middle, and hugs him. He refuses to let go, and jeez, it’s not like Bucky’s complaining.)

 

It’s a good day.

 

* * *

 

On June 26, 2015, Bucky is thirty-five years old.

 

Steve is turning thirty-four, and they’ve been together through Bucky losing an arm overseas, and with it all the writing and drawings. They’ve been together through Steve getting awful illnesses, repeatedly. They’ve dealt with the general homophobia of society.

 

They’ve just started the day when they get the text, same as anyone else - marriage equality is now in all 50 states.

 

They don’t even have to share a look. They both rush to their room and grab their best suits, the ones they wore at Sam and Nat’s wedding, giggling the whole time.

 

Their marriage is witnessed by the other dozens of people there, getting hitched. It’s easily the happiest they’ve ever been.

 

That night, Bucky writes on his jaw, from under his ear to just past the cleft of his chin, _You’re not getting away from me. Never again._

  


**Author's Note:**

> Other things I imagine they've written on each other  
> \- some if not all the lyrics of Hey There Delilah


End file.
